Buying ARM is pointless

ARM CEO Warren East has said that it is perfectly pointless trying to buy his company.

Shares in the outfit rose to an eight year record on the back of rumours that someone was planning to buy the chip designer. Word on the street is that Apple wants to bring the design shop back inhouse.

However East warned that any outfit buying the chip designer would lose on the deal. He said that ARM was worth a lot more as a standalone company.

Chatting to the press in San Francisco, East said that it made no sense to buy ARM unless you wanted to shut it off from your competition.

ARM’s chip technology is at the heart of most of the world’s jolly clever phones and its customers include semiconductor makers Qualcomm and Texas Instruments. And Apple. And Intel.

While licensees pay “tens of millions” for ARM designs it would cost them $5 billion to buy the outfit which is cash they would never get back.

While the research is valuable to multiple users, making the technology exclusive to a single chipmaker wouldn’t generate a high enough return, East said. You would probably get a better return by converting all the cash into banknotes and having a nice fire, perhaps toasting a few marshmallows for extra value.